Do people matter anymore?
(Stuart Crowther)

WHEN YOU LOOK AROUND football today, you have to wonder if people are all that important anymore.  Yes, I know that there are those who will leap from their session at the computer desk and point out that people still play the game, watch the game and run the game.  What I mean by my question though is, who are they playing the game for, running the game for - watching the game for?

There is a very good argument that nothing much has really changed; this argument looks back over the history of the game and reveals exploitation at different levels, and that this exploitation merely mirrors what is happening in society as a whole.  Difficult to argue against that one when you study the evidence, as when professional football first came to this country there is little doubt that clubs were owned by the rich few, and much as in other walks of life the employee would doff a cap to the rich owner and do what he was told - or else.

As industrial relations and employee rights changed for the better over the years, so did the lot of the young man fortunate enough to have the talent to play professional football.  Even then, people like Joe Baker, Lawrie Reilly, Pat Stanton, Gordon Smith - they played for the love of the game and anyone who questions for one minute that any one of these men were in the game only for the money is well out of touch with the type of people they are, and who played the game during what could be described as the glory days for football.

"people like Joe Baker, Lawrie Reilly, Pat Stanton, Gordon Smith - they played for the love of the game"

Of course many a great player from these long-gone days ended up working out the rest of their lives on the shop floor or selling insurance, one or two even moved into politics to become the Scottish First Minister.  The lucky few made enough to graduate to the standard occupation of the retired football, running a pub, and fewer still actually managed to make such occupation pay!

Arthur Duncan - could you imagine anyone spending so long at one club nowadays?

Time has a habit of changing things, and like all entertainment-related activities, football has seen rapid and constant change.  Now a professional footballer no longer sees any allegiance to one club as something he should care about, sure he might have 'supported Hibs as a boy' but when it comes down to the hard cash no longer can a club Board use such a thing as a lever to signing a lesser deal.  Wanting to play for Hibs is one thing, selling your soul to the club for half a crown for the favour of doing so is no longer an option.

So the people that do matter, and who now have much of the power in the game, are the players - well at least the top echelon.  Strangely, it could be said that the club owners and players have switched positions, as more often than not it is the owner who takes on the task of working for a club because of a childhood loyalty to that club.  Local boy makes good, local boy uses some of his millions to buy the club of his dreams - and local boy quickly finds his riches vanishing into the pockets of not-so-local overpaid and fading superstar footballers.

Then there is that other group of people, the fans.  They mattered alright, when 50,000 of them would pack into the old high terracing of Easter Road, suffering unspeakable indifference in terms of facilities and even more in terms of entertainment!  They poured millions into the game and more often than not got scant reward.  Such is entertainment of course, after all you go to see a play or movie you have no guarantee that the performance is going to be worth the cash, so why should football ever have been any different.  But here is the crux - while football has changed for the owners, and certainly has changed for the players, has it changed for the fans?

There are seated stadiums now.  But do the fans want that?  Many do, but many more dislike having to sit on a plastic seat, often cramped far too close to its neighbour, and hanker for the freedom of standing.   Certainly though the more human-friendly resources provided by the new stands have been welcome, but this has come at a cost that is increasingly becoming a serious problem for those who still love to attend football.  And so the downfall of football might be summarised thus; the owners are no longer willing to give away their millions even if they have loved the club all their lives; the players see no loyalty to anyone but themselves and will take from the game every available penny without feeling any remorse (and why should they); and the fans, the one group who should matter most as they provide the money, are as a result being asked to shoulder the full cost of all this - and they simply can't afford it.

So do people matter anymore?  Of course they do, because the one theme through the whole sorry tale of football in 2001 is that everyone cares for the game, for different reasons perhaps, and it is only a question of finding the level at which everyone can be happy.  So I dream a lot!